With my limited spare time due to circumstances I’ve decided to engage in a blogging phenomenon called ‘Guest posts’. Today, I’m publishing the very first of these posts, courtesy of Thomsons Online Benefits.

I don’t want to deprive my readers of content because of my busy schedule, so I’m very pleased to write this short introduction to the post below. It’s not what I usually write about, but it is certainly an extremely interesting subject that has a lot of HR professionals scratching their heads. The article below sheds some light on said subject and offers a solution. I hope you enjoy it, and please, if you have any remarks or things to add feel free to do so in the comment section. After all, HR isn’t an exact science and some discussion could be to both our benefits.

Don’t fall victim to the technology talent ticking time bomb

It is hardly a secret that the IT industry is one of the quickest-growing areas of recruitment at a time when employment in many sectors has near enough ground to a halt.

The increasing reliance on technology means that the industry is constantly in demand of the bright young things who are going to be its next innovators. Indeed, recruitment professionals are forecasting employment of IT professionals will grow at nearly twice the UK average per annum in the years leading up to 2020.

In fact, one in 20 workers in the UK are currently employed in the IT and telecoms sector – a large percentage of the country’s workforce.

Despite this, it seems that all may not be well in paradise! Recent research from Thomsons Online Benefits has found that the majority of Generation Y employees are looking to switch jobs within the next two years. Such statistic is bound to concern HR professionals and get them to re-think the employee benefits schemes they offer. In an industry like IT, where experience is paramount, losing long-serving employees effectively means that businesses would lose years of investment in employee training.

So what happens when you try to hire new people to fill these vacancies left by former dissatisfied workers? Well, according to recent statistics there is simply no-one there to take on the job. Half of recruiters have said that they find filling positions in the IT and telecoms industry a challenge.

So, how can recruitment and retention be improved?

With employees in the IT and telecoms sector looking elsewhere for jobs, and no-one willing to fill the positions they leave, employers clearly need to tackle the issue of recruitment and employee retention. But how can they do this?

Well, it has been found that 73 per cent of employees consider other things more important than salary when looking to move job roles, indicating that employers who review their employee benefits package could see their recruitment and retention take a turn for the better.

Despite the importance of employee benefits and the effect improving them could have on many companies, there is a serious mismatch when it comes to the benefits schemes desired by employees and those actually offered by employers.

For example, while around 70 per cent of employees’ identify flexible working as one of the most important employee benefits, just fewer than 60 per cent of businesses actually offer these. On the other end of the spectrum, just ten per cent of employees named private medical cover as one of the top employee benefits they look for, but over 70 per cent of companies offered these.

Employers in the technology sector are clearly failing to do what they need to do when it comes to engaging their workforce, thereby cutting their chances of losing out on the best talent that could take their company to the top. Simply looking at the desires of employees, and shaping their employee benefits packages accordingly, could really help to turn this worrying trend around.

About the Author

Thomsons Online Benefits are experienced in flexible benefits scheme design, pensions and employee communication, our team of highly experienced consultants develop innovative programmes with clients that maximise the value of their reward spend.